page_title: Kiribati
section_title: Colonial era
hierarchical_section_title: Kiribati / History / Colonial era
caption_attribution_description: English: Declaration of a protectorate on Abemama by Captain Davis, 27th May 1892
context_page_description: Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an independent country in the central Pacific Ocean. The permanent population is just over 110,000, more than half of whom live on Tarawa atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and one raised coral island, Banaba. They have a total land area of 811 square kilometres and are dispersed over 3.5 million km².
  Their spread straddles the equator and the 180th meridian, although the International Date Line goes round Kiribati and swings far to the east, almost reaching the 150° W meridian. This brings Kiribati's easternmost islands, the southern Line Islands south of Hawaii, into the same day as the Gilbert Islands and places them in the most advanced time zone on Earth: UTC+14. Kiribati is one of the few countries in the world to be situated in all four hemispheres.
  Kiribati gained its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming a sovereign state in 1979. The capital, South Tarawa, now the most populated area, consists of a number of islets, connected by a series of causeways. These comprise about half the area of Tarawa atoll.
context_section_description: Chance visits by European ships occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, while those ships attempted circumnavigations of the world, or sought sailing routes from the south to north Pacific Ocean. A passing trade, whaling the On-The-Line grounds, and labour ships associated with blackbirding of Kanakas workers, visited the islands in large numbers during the 19th century, with social, economic, political, religious and cultural consequences. More than 9,000 workers were sent abroad from 1845 to 1895, most of them not returning.
  The passing trade gave rise to European, Chinese, Samoan and other residents from the 1830s: they included beachcombers, castaways, traders and missionaries. 
  In 1886, an Anglo-German agreement partitioned the “unclaimed” central Pacific, leaving Nauru in the German sphere of influence, while Ocean Island and the future GEIC wound up in the British sphere of influence. In 1892, local Gilbertese authorities (an uea, a chief from the Northern Gilbert Group, and atun te boti or head of clan) on each of the Gilbert Islands agreed to Captain E.H.M. Davis commanding HMS Royalist of the Royal Navy declaring them part of a British protectorate, along with the nearby Ellice Islands. They were administered by a resident commissioner based first on Makin Islands (1893–95), then Tarawa (1896–1908) and Ocean Island (1908–1942), protectorate who was under the Western Pacific High Commission based in Fiji. Banaba, known to Europeans as Ocean Island, was added to the protectorate in 1900, because of the phosphate rock of its soil (discovered in 1900). This discovery and the mining ended the contracting of Kanakas workers to farm plantations in Queensland, German Samoa or Central America, with all the needed workers being used in Ocean Island extraction.
  The conduct of William Telfer Campbell, the resident commissioner of the Gilberts and Ellice Islands of 1896 to 1908, was criticised as to his legislative, judicial and administrative management (including allegations of forced labour exacted from islanders) and became the subject of the 1909 report by Arthur Mahaffy. In 1913, an anonymous correspondent to The New Age newspaper described the maladministration of W. Telfer Campbell and questioned the partiality of Arthur Mahaffy, because he was a former colonial official in the Gilberts. The anonymous correspondent also criticised the operations of the Pacific Phosphate Company on Ocean Island.
  The islands became the crown colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in 1916. The Northern Line Islands, including Christmas Island (Kiritimati), were added to the colony in 1919, and the Phoenix Islands were added in 1937 with the purpose of a Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme. On 12 July 1940, Pan Am Airways’ American Clipper landed at Canton Island for the first time during a flight from Honolulu to Auckland.
  Sir Arthur Grimble was a cadet administrative officer based at Tarawa (1913–1919) and became Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1926.
  In 1902, the Pacific Cable Board laid the first trans-Pacific telegraph cable from Bamfield, British Columbia to Fanning Island (Tabuaeran) in the Line Islands, and from Fiji to Fanning Island, thus completing the All Red Line, a series of telegraph lines circumnavigating the globe completely within the British Empire. The location of Fanning Island, one of the closest formations to Hawaii, led to its annexation by the British Empire in 1888. Nearby candidates including Palmyra Island were not favoured due to the lack of adequate landing sites.
   
  The United States eventually incorporated the Northern Line Islands into its territories, and did the same with the Phoenix Islands, which lie between Gilberts and the Line Islands, including Howland, Jarvis, and Baker islands, thus causing a territorial dispute. That was eventually resolved and they finally became part of Kiribati under the Treaty of Tarawa.
  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, during World War II, Butaritari and Tarawa, and others of the Northern Gilbert group, were occupied by Japan from 1941 to
caption: Declaration of a protectorate on Abemama by Captain EHM Davis, 27 May 1892
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